Philippine anti-trafficking authorities are set to investigate an alleged human trafficking case involving 36 Filipino fishermen who were made to work in the waters of Namibia reportedly under poor labor conditions.<\/p>\n
The Department of Migrant Workers (DMW) on Tuesday, March 28, announced that it had endorsed the case to the Department of Justice and the Inter-Agency Council Against Trafficking (IACAT) for investigation and appropriate action.<\/p>\n
According to affidavits of 26 repatriated seafarers, they believed that they would be working in Taiwan, but their group eventually ended up fishing in Namibia, a country in southern Africa.<\/p>\n
\u201cBased on the testimonies that we gathered, the fishermen were sometimes made to work for 36 hours straight with only two meals a day, and an average of four hours of sleep. Their identity papers including passports and seamen\u2019s books were kept away from the workers which is a blatant violation of the rights of these seafarers,\u201d said Migrant Workers Secretary Susan Ople.<\/p>\n
Two industrial fishing vessels rescued the fishermen in Namibia in early September 2022. According to an\u00a0Africa Defense Forum\u00a0article, there were 60 rescued from the MV Shang Fu and Nata 2 vessels in Walvis Bay, and most of them were Filipino.<\/p>\n
The DMW reported that the manning agencies involved \u2013 Trioceanic Manning & Shipping, and Diamond H. Marine Services & Shipping Agency \u2013 made appearances with the department and paid back wages to the fishermen.<\/p>\n
But Ople said any financial settlements would not prevent Philippine authorities from investigating the criminal aspects of the case that led to the fishermen\u2019s exploitation.<\/p>\n
Ople added that there are enough grounds to investigate the manning agencies for forced labor trafficking.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the fishermen\u2019s principals, Shang Chi Enterprise Ltd, One Marine Services, and Arrow Marine PTE Ltd, also face permanent disqualification from hiring Filipino fishermen, Ople said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"menu_order":2,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[177],"tags":[835],"region":[28],"source":[2538],"country":[2047],"state":[],"city":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newss\/101642"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newss"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/newss"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newss\/101642\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":101643,"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newss\/101642\/revisions\/101643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101642"},{"taxonomy":"region","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/region?post=101642"},{"taxonomy":"source","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/source?post=101642"},{"taxonomy":"country","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/country?post=101642"},{"taxonomy":"state","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/state?post=101642"},{"taxonomy":"city","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/city?post=101642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}